“…it’s not enough that The Consul is an inch-deep trivialization of one of the most momentous and agonizing events of the modern era, Eastern Europe’s (ongoing) struggle against totalitarianism…. Menotti, astonishingly, managed to ratchet up the outrage even further: He wrote an opera ostensibly about the horrors of dehumanization in which the empty characters exist only to be manipulated for his ulterior motives. That’s one hell of a sick irony.” [Seattle Weekly]